


Of Stars and Vines

by loveheartlover



Category: Glee
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-21
Updated: 2014-10-21
Packaged: 2018-02-22 00:00:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,739
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2487080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveheartlover/pseuds/loveheartlover
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>He just wasn’t sure at what point during the day he’d gone from having a fantastic day with one of his best friends, to wondering whether or not Elliott would let him kiss him. </i>
</p><p> </p><p>----------<br/>Kurt gets dragged to a festival with Dani and Elliott for "band mate bonding". He leaves with misshapen pottery, a new appreciation for face paint, and one more thing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Of Stars and Vines

Kurt isn’t sure how they got to this point.

Well, he knows how they got  _here,_ in the physical sense. It’s pretty hard to forget being dragged out to a festival in the middle of nowhere by your band for some whacked out weirdo bonding type thing, that apparently Dani and Elliott swear by. Kurt had been pretty sceptical at first. He’d always hated camping as a kid, and while he didn’t mind getting dirty, he needed access to a shower or a  _very good reason_ to not be clean afterwards.  

That was probably why Dani didn’t mention the no showers thing until they were bundled up in her car and driving out of the city. “But band bonding  _is_ a good reason!” She pointed out, at Kurt’s indignant squawk. Kurt had rounded on Elliott for support, but he’d just laughed and continued flicking between radio stations.

“Look,” Elliott eventually said, when they’d pulled over to get gas and directions, “it’s two nights. We’re going to spend a weekend surrounded by new people, who are all here to have a good time and let off some steam. You’re not traipsing through mud on a hike, it’s just a few big fields and some trees. I have complete faith that you’ll be able to handle it. And,” he added when Kurt frowned, “if you leave here not having had a good time, I’ll fund your coffee breaks for the next three weeks. Deal?”

Kurt couldn’t argue with that. So he tried. Really. He didn’t complain when the tent bag split and spewed poles and canvas all over the car. He didn’t whinge about the two hour hike to the campsite, another fact Dani had conveniently forgotten to mention- although Elliott seemed as put out by that part as him. Not a bitter word left his lips as they struggled to put a tent up in the pouring rain, climbed inside once it seemed stable to plan their next move, and were promptly engulfed as the whole thing collapsed on top of them.

And eventually, Kurt didn’t have to pretend to not be annoyed.

After that first awful night, when the three of them wound up sleeping on top of the tent and praying it didn’t rain again because they just couldn’t get the damn thing to stay erect, things picked up. A group of Dani’s friends from other festivals showed up, all dancers for some reason. “It’s her type,” Elliott explained in a stage whisper, to which Dani had laughed and shrugged.  There were two men and three women, and while none of them could fix the tent, a woman passing by with two little girls took pity and stepped in. It took her less than ten minutes to get it looking perfect. While she chatted away to Dani and the dancers about another festival happening in a few weeks, the girls had led Kurt and Elliott into another field. There were even more tents, but with the addition of groups of kids scampering about doing acrobatics displays, stalls selling jewellery and clothing, and music everywhere. Groups of men playing guitar, a girl with a violin, elderly women drumming an impossible beat, with envious teenagers hanging off their every word.

Kurt found himself singing everywhere they went, and for once it didn’t matter if he was in key or knew the lyrics. Elliott was soon singing with him, and they couldn’t help but compete. Who could sing the weirdest but still relevant line, or do the best impression of the guy playing a ukulele in the corner, or go the most off key without sounding like a dying cat.

They’d lost the kids almost as soon as they’d reached the field, but found them in the late afternoon in one of the bigger tents, weaving baskets with a group of others. They got suckered into it too, and then let the girls lead them on to make lanterns and paint misshapen mugs and decorate dream-catchers.  It was the kind of nonsense Kurt had always scoffed at, but with Elliott, it became fun.

 The people weren’t what he’d expected either.

Okay there was a permanent smell of weed in the air, and there were definitely a few dodgy looking people lingering on the outskirts, but for the most part the festival-goers were just… normal. The girls’ mom turned out to be a psychiatrist from Chicago, there were college professors running the lantern making stall, and more students than Kurt could keep track of. Elliott never said  _I told you so,_ but it was written plain across his face every time Kurt laughed at a joke or sang along to a snippet of some old folk song he vaguely remembered from late nights as a child.

Dani called them over to hang out with her after they’d been wandering for a while. She was stretched out on a rug, painting the faces of kids and adults alike, beads and bells strung through her hair. They helped for a while, but as the sun finally began to set she ambled off, pressing lazy kisses to their foreheads and promising they’d bond tomorrow instead. Kurt finished up his final fairy and watched her run over to her mother, beaming from ear to ear, before glancing over at Elliott.

Yes, he knew how they got here.

He just wasn’t sure at what point during the day he’d gone from having a fantastic day with one of his best friends, to wondering whether or not Elliott would let him kiss him.

“You’re staring,” Elliott said. He was lying on his back on the rug, eyes closed and head tilted back towards a sky of streaky clouds he couldn’t see.

“No I’m not,” Kurt said, automatically. “You can’t see me, I could be dancing naked for all you know.”

Elliott laughed. “I think it’d take more than one weekend at a festival for you to go nudist on me. And you are staring, I can feel it. Here,” he gestured at his chest.

Kurt huffed. “I don’t stare. I’m… working out what I’m going to paint on you.”

Elliott cracked open one eye at that and squints, but doesn’t move when Kurt loads up a brush with black paint and trails it along Elliott’s bare forearms. Kurt hadn’t had a pattern in mind when he started, but a design takes place even so. He paints black vines along Elliott’s fingers, wrists, arms, lets them disappear into his sleeves and picks them back up at the collar of his shirt. The brush licks up along the edges of Elliott’s face, tickles across his forehead. Kurt swaps the black for green and paints leaves along the vines, adds shadows and highlights, gets lost in the jungle he paints along the underside of Elliott’s jaw. At some point he goes from awkwardly leaning over Elliott to straddling his hips, and he doesn’t notice until Elliott puts his hands on Kurt’s waist to steady him.

For a second Kurt is thrown, and then he swallows and goes back to black. He uses the hand not holding the brush to keep Elliott’s head steady, and paints around his eyes, trails the paint off into little curls near Elliott’s eyebrows. He adds green buds to those too, and pretends his shaking hands are because of how detailed the work is and not how close to Elliott he’s become.

When Kurt finally puts down the brush, Elliott is transformed. They stay pressed close, Kurt’s exhales becoming Elliott’s inhales, and just when Kurt is about to lean in, Elliott rolls them over. He looms over Kurt, all big arms and wide eyes that look all the wider for the paint, and he takes the fallen paintbrushes for himself.

“Close your eyes,” he murmurs, voice soft against Kurt’s ear, before he pulls back and begins to dab purple across Kurt’s face as a base. Kurt keeps his eyes closed even when Elliott moves on to his neck, his wrists and hands, the shoulder his soft sweater leaves bare. The large sponge is swapped for the slick brush, and Kurt can feel each stroke as Elliott traces his cheekbones, his lips, his eyes. Elliott takes far longer than Kurt had. Every breath he takes can be felt on Kurt’s skin, like a soft kiss that lingers long after Elliott has moved on. By the time Elliott sits back and says Kurt can open his eyes, Kurt feels like he’s spent the last forty minutes being seduced.

“What d’you think?” Elliott asks, holding up the cracked mirror from Dani’s bag.

Kurt’s gasp is 100% real.

His skin has become the night sky. The dark, blue-purple base is filled with slightly lighter clouds, and the space between them is dotted with tiny stars. Kurt can trace constellations across his forehead, can read within the nonsense dots Orion on his wrist and Gemini on his cheek. A crescent moon hangs bright around his left eye, illuminating the clouds around it.

Elliott’s vines make him wild.

Kurt’s stars make him vibrant.

“It’s incredible,” Kurt says, and Elliott’s Cheshire Cat grin threatens to outshine the sun that must be rising somewhere else, because the only light left for the men now comes from the lanterns that light the way to a bonfire a few fields over.

“You want to kiss me.”

It’s not a question, it doesn’t hang in their air between them, doesn’t have Kurt stuttering out an apology. Elliott says the words like a prayer, his tongue curling around each one as his eyes glitter.

There is only one way to respond, really.

When Kurt gets back to the apartment on Sunday night, the first thing he does is change his profile picture on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram. Dani had snapped it when the men had eventually made their way to the bonfire. Kurt and Elliott’s cheeks were pressed together as they laughed into the camera, letting the bonfire highlight the paint on their skin, the mixture of purple and black on each other’s lips from where the paint hadn’t quite dried before they’d kissed.

The fact Kurt has dirt under his nails, slightly greasy hair, and paint spattered across his clothes doesn’t matter.

He has a dozen new contacts in his phone, an overly feathered dream-catcher hanging above his bed, and a boyfriend who brings him coffee in bed in their matching wobbly mugs.

What more could he ask for?


End file.
